It’s a little before the lunch rush here in the galley and I’m using a
bit of the quiet time here to write today’s post. From where I sit I
can see nearly half the entire horizon — as close to a completely flat
line as you can get, apart from being on an ocean-going boat, I
suppose. There is a meditation technique in which one raises one eyes
to whatever horizon, real or imaginary, is in front of one, and one
simply watches thoughts arise and fall away. That horizon is nowhere
more perfect than here.

The minimalism of the view means that any human construction (antenna,
caterpillar tractor, futuristic building, or any of the many thousands
of flag markers), no matter how distant, stands out in relief. That
visual fact underscores a notion I have about this place. Except for
featureless plains of snow, a wide-open sky, wind, and extreme cold,
one’s experience of this place is almost exclusively that of humans
and human-made things. No trees, no terrain, no insects or animals, no
smells, nothing — except what we have brought here. In this way, this
alien location is perhaps the most human place I will ever
visit. Music in the galley, jokes over email and posted on the
corridor walls, footsteps in the hallway outside your room while
you’re trying to sleep, the fuel smells mixing with food cooking in
the galley, one’s own body odors and those of one’s colleagues, and,
most of all, one’s own mundane or esoterically technical work — these
are the parameters of life here. The strange irony of this place is
that it is all fellowship and craft, in one of the harshest spots on
Earth.

Despite the potential circus atmosphere, some veterans insist that
Antarctica is not for novices.

“It’s a place that wants you dead,” said Robert Swan, an
environmentalist who walked Scott’s route to the South Pole
in 1985. “Scott found that out 100 years ago.”

True enough — particularly for tourists who try to walk, ski, or drive
here (yes, people do drive to the South Pole from time to time). But
for us, ensconced relatively comfortably in this space station /
aircraft carrier / submarine, it is certainly less hazardous than it
was for Amundsen and Scott, and nothing more than human. When we visit
the stars, we will take everything about ourselves with us… and that
may provide the biggest challenge, and the biggest joy.

Yesterday after dinner I took a turn in the dish pit washing
dishes. The galley serves 200 people for dinner and so there is a real
after-dinner rush for the dishwashers; they rely partly on volunteers
on Sunday (and Ricky, one of the dishwashers, had just finished
winning the marathon). It was a pleasure to work fast, with my body
and hands, to feel warm water and the spray of errant droplets on my
face. Computer work is exceptionally hard to do with full-body
awareness, but when washing dishes that awareness is an easy
pleasure. Fleetwood Mac off of someone’s iPod kept the beat. The
gratitude of the galley staff was palpable. It was a high point of
this trip, simply to turn dirty dishes into clean ones.